


Prologue

by JamesJohnEye



Series: Things unattempted yet (in prose or rhyme) [1]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 07:14:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4470140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JamesJohnEye/pseuds/JamesJohnEye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What he doesn’t quite remember is how Benji has evolved from stranger, to friend, to this, whatever they are now.</p><p>But he can trace the origins.</p><p>And this is how it began</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prologue

Things unattempted yet

(in prose or rhyme)

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

'Je dacht dat deze wereld anders was. En je bent er nog altijd niet overheen dat het gewoon deze wereld is' zei ze tegen hem.

'Ik denk het nog steeds' zei hij.

 

‘You thought this world was different. And you still haven’t gotten over the fact that it’s just this world,’ she said to him.

‘I still think that,’ he says.

 

By Huub Oosterhuis

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

No-one really knows how it all started.

Some claim to still remember the first whispers about some new disease, a rare type of infection, virus or flu which had spread like wildfire. At first they were just whispers, small articles in the foreign section and hesitantly published research in rare medical journals. Through the paper it slowly crept towards the health section, then domestic until it was finally splattered all over the front page. By then it was already too late.

International travel grinded to a halt. Airports were shut down, harbors closed. It didn’t stop the spread. Pamphlets were released which urged people to wash their hands more regularly, to stay indoors whenever possible, to visit their local hospital with any and all symptoms. The symptoms were so vague that soon everyone reported to their doctors. Hospitals were starting to fill up, local doctors had to turn people away, causing a frenzy.

Quarantine zones were erected. Many didn’t leave their homes however, refusing to be locked away like cattle. Others thought that this was just the latest thing, like SARS had been, or Ebola. They thought it would pass.

The military started to patrol the streets, trying to keep everyone inside their homes. Regular life stopped everywhere but in small towns and the country side. Trade froze and Wall Street fell. Communication with other countries became harder. Some failed to respond. Rare reports of fallen governments leaked through until every line went silent.

Public unrest turned into panic and fear. The disease spread throughout the land. No-one was safe.

A few claim to have been listening to the emergency broadcast on the radio when the last station fell. They tell stories of how they’d listened to the desperate pleas of those inside. How their screams were the last thing they heard before that too stopped. The broadcast probably shut down right after, but, for show, some say the last thing they heard was a menacing growl which had sounded almost human-like.

After that, everything seemed to happen at once. The government fell. People abandoned their posts to spend the last days with their loved ones. Churches, mosques and prayer houses started to fill up again. People kneeling and begging for forgiveness, filled with questions and fears and only left with a God who had forsaken them. Hospitals were overrun. The military too. Quarantine zones were broken and wiped out.

The dead ruled the land.

Daryl never read about the rumors in the papers or journals. Instead, he heard them in the rundown bar where he and Merle used to hang out. Like everything there, it had started out as a joke. Push and shove, lame threats about feeding someone to the biters, nothing serious as the threat still only seemed to loom in other countries.

It wasn’t long before the crappy television in the corner of the bar displayed images of the first walking dead in the US. They drank beer while watching the first rise, played some pool as quarantine zones fell, shrugged on their coats when the news reporter fell prey to the dead.

‘Dumb fuck,’ he’d muttered before following his brother and hitching a ride on the back of his motorcycle.

The world went to hell within minutes, it seemed. They came home to find their little town under attack. They grabbed the few provisions they had, Daryl dashing to snatch his bow and bolts from the shed, while Merle stuffed their bags with food and some clothing. They ran.

Maybe they could have done something. While they rode away, they left others to die. He’d thought about Mrs Evans, their next-door neighbour. An old lady who’d once patched up his skinned knee and had made him iced tea on a hot summer’s day when he was younger. He knows she didn’t make it. But he also knows he’d owed her and still they had left her to fate and death.

He, in the early days still mellow and wide-eyed, once mentioned this to his brother and his brother had quickly shot his thoughts down. He’d burned their bridges with vicious words and a sole reliance on their bond of blood. Prison had already moulded his mind into one of strike, before they strike you. And he had made short work of his brother’s youthful innocence.

That was just the beginning, of course. His innocence, if he ever had it, is now completely lost. He pretends not to mourn it.

Some claim that this new world has changed them, but Daryl knows that that isn’t true for him. He was always like this. Ruthlessly loyal to those he considered to be his, fierce in love and hot in temper. Maybe he was always tainted by his brother and upbringing. Before, he may have thought himself inferior to others. The educated, the rich, the ones who fitted the old moulds of Good Men far better than he ever could have. Now, he knows they are all equal. They all survived. And yet, he may be the only one who thrived. It’s hard to acknowledge how well he fits into this new world. Before he was nothing more than red-neck trash, but now he’s a respected leader. People look to him for strength and guidance. He gives it, as best he’s capable, even though he sometimes still feels woe-fully unqualified.

There will always be moments of doubt, he supposes. Shadows of his former life which haunt him. Memories of his brother’s life-lessons. The character his father had built with his fist and belt. Of course this new life has left scars too, less visible maybe, but not harder earned.

The farm, the prison, Woodbury, they all robbed him of any sense of normalcy. Safety he now only finds in his new family. He no longer believes in thick walls and barbed wire. And not even in himself, not like he used to. He knows he needs others who will keep him safe while he sleeps, who will make sure he actually eats his share, who will still look him in the eye after all he’s done.

It’s hard to keep faith in this world. The belief that there one day will be a place which he’ll be able to call home. This faith had started to slip from him after the prison. When his mind became derailed by loss, fear and hunger.

Now, he stands on a hilltop, looking down on a farm which reminds him of Hershel. It’s abandoned. They’ve been staking it out for days now. He still claims they should wait a bit longer. He likes the idea of the new farm. He fears it might be doomed the moment they set foot in it, like the prison had been, and Hershel’s farm, but he can’t postpone it any longer. They need a place like this. Somewhere where they can lick their wounds and regroup. Mentally, rather than physically. They’ve been on the road, again, for too long.

After one last look at the farm and surrounding fields, he turns on the spot and starts his track back down, where the group is waiting for him.

After a couple of minutes, he can spot the first members of his group through the trees. Rick, who is leaning against the passenger side of a car, bounces baby Judith on his hip and entertains her with silly faces and the tickling of his beard. Tara is standing on the opposite side of the road, a gun in her hand and her gaze roaming the surroundings for any sign of trouble.

Carol, Carl and Benji are sitting on the ground, near the ditch. The young boy is leaning against the man, tired after spending all day in the car. Benji has his arm looped around bony shoulders, gesturing avidly with his free hand as he tells one of his stories. Carol smothers her giggles in her scarf.

Some days it still surprises Daryl how quickly they’ve made that man their own. Family, in all but blood. It wasn’t easy at first. After the prison, the long road to nowhere, the thirst, hunger, fear, hell, not after Terminus. But here he is, amongst them. _With_ them.

Something warm pools inside Daryl’s chest at the sight of him. The premature gray hair glistens in the sunlight, his long legs are stretched out before him. From this distance, Daryl can’t make out how green his eyes seem in this light but he knows that they shine bright. They always do.

A horrid scar marks his cheek and neck, blood-red against his pale skin. It disappears beneath his clothing. Daryl knows it ends on his collarbone.

Rick lifts his gaze just when Daryl breaks the tree line. The startled look is replaced by a warm smile when the former sheriff recognizes him and his eyebrows rise in a silent question.

They’re all waiting for Daryl to give the sign to move in. The weight of responsibility makes him uneasy, like he’s treading on unfamiliar paths, but Rick has been shifting it to him for a long time now. Ever since he stopped looking at Shane. Of course, it’s not just him. It’s Glenn, Maggie and Carol, too, but he seems to be the one Rick reaches out to most. Or maybe, he’s just always already there.

‘Seems clear,’ Daryl says while hitching his crossbow higher onto his shoulder. ‘We should scout it to be sure. Can’t see inside, could be some locked in or somethin’.’ He rubs at his nose to avoid eye contact, a habit that even his dad couldn’t beat out of him. ‘Hilltop’s got a good view.’

Rick nods, ‘Sasha and Rosita can take the hilltop and cover you from there, just in case some come onto the grounds while you’re inside.’

‘Alright, I’ll take the bike, ‘s easier to get out with than those damn cars,’ he spits on the ground before moving over towards the vehicle. It had only dawned on him after a couple of days that Merle’s bike had been lost when the prison fell. This new one is a sleeker Yamaha, not build for long rides, though he manages all the same. The first couple of days made his shoulders burn, as he now needs to lean forwards on the handlebars, but by now it’s as familiar to him as his brother’s had been.

‘You got enough ammo?’ Rick asks as he follows him.

‘Yeah.’ Daryl throws his leg over and clicks the crossbow into a holder he’d made on the side of the bike. ‘I’m good.’

‘That’s my cue,’ Benji says as he gets up and walks over to the two men. Daryl gives him a curt nod in passing, signalling that he’s ready for Benji to get on. So he grips Daryl’s shoulder with his left hand, places his foot on the peg and stands up to swing his leg over the back of the bike before sitting down behind the hunter. An arm snakes around his waist, hand resting on hip.

‘Be careful, the both of you,’ Rick warns as he takes a small step back.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on him,’ Benji promises as Daryl brings the engine to life beneath them. He lets the machine roll a couple of inches, testing the balance a bit before reaching out and giving Rick a familiar pat on the stomach. Then he revs the engine and smoothly guides the bike onto the road.

‘Ya good?’ he asks, looking back at his passenger.

‘Yeah, let’s roll.’

 

 

They park in front of the farm house. Everything is quiet.

Up close, Daryl can see that the house isn’t in a bad shape. Most of the work seems to be cosmetic, with the door hanging off its hinges and the paint coming off the walls. A few floorboards on the deck seem dodgy, but they hold Benji’s weight when he carefully walks up the small set of stairs leading up to the door.

Daryl grabs his crossbow and follows him, making sure to step on the supporting beams of the floor.

‘What do you wanna do?’ Benji asks in a hushed whisper. ‘Knock and wait?’

Daryl shrugs and aims a kick at the door. The sound of it makes his friend wince, but there’s no answering growl from inside.

‘Split up?’

Daryl shakes his head, ‘best have my back.’

Benji nods while taking his gun out of the holster and checking the safety, ‘always do.’

The words tug at Daryl’s heartstrings.  They count down silently and then burst into the house. With his pulse racing, Daryl side-steps into the living room, crossbow pressed against his shoulder and cheek, but there’s nothing there.

All the furniture is covered with thin white sheets to protect them from dust. Benji pulls one of them from the couch, beaming at his friend. ‘Damn, I thought people only did this in movies. You think they’re ever coming back?’

‘No.’

The place has been abandoned for a long time, even before the outbreak. All tire tracks have faded from the surrounding grounds, nobody ever came here, and now, nobody will ever return.

‘Well,’ Benji says, swinging his gun back up and walking towards the next room. ‘If they ever do come back, maybe we will still be here, you know, keeping their beds warm, have some food on the table ready for them. Some religions have that, you know? Setting a plate for a stranger so they’re always welcome. I like that.’

‘Yeah, you would,’ Daryl murmurs as he pushes another door open with his foot.

He doesn’t understand Benji, who wasn’t born for this kind of world but still survived. Like all of them, he’s had his own hardships, before and after the outbreak, but unlike Daryl, he’s never lost faith. Not in a brighter future, a safer place, a home. And not in other people, either. He refuses to believe in _stranger danger_ , even though he bears the marks of it on his skin.

‘All clear, let’s check upstairs.’

Daryl nods and follows him. They split up eventually to cover ground faster, but all the doors are wide open and nothing is trapped inside the house. There are no signs that anything ever went down here, Daryl muses as he checks one of the bathrooms. There’s no blood on the walls or floors, no bones or decomposing bodies. Everything is just covered in a layer of dust. Their footsteps are the only tracks he can see.

‘Hey, Daryl!’ Benji suddenly calls out. ‘Come up here!’

With his pulse suddenly picking up again, Daryl dashes back out to the landing and then up the stairs, following Benji’s tracks. On the top, he grinds to a halt.

Benji is standing in the middle of the attic with several white sheets pooling around him. He’s surrounded by rows and rows of bookcases. The dark wood shines in the sunlight, which floods the whole room due to a large window behind Benji. There’s a low leather couch, obviously well-used and loved, and a stuffed armchair. Dust dances in the rays of sunlight.

The floorboards creak when Daryl slowly moves towards his friend, his gaze traveling over the many books.

‘They have a library,’ Benji says weakly.

Daryl huffs out a breath of laughter, ‘dibs on the couch.’

‘I don’t care, my God, look at this. A _library_. Poor fucks made my apocalypse. I never thought I’d see another one. It’s like I’m back home, well, not _home_ , I mean… You know what I mean. Hell, I’d sleep on the roof if I had to.’

‘Why’s that?’ Daryl asks softly, stepping into the personal space of his friend, ‘’s a pretty big couch.’

Benji laughs and wraps an arm around Daryl’s shoulders, the gun still in his hands but with the safety on now. ‘Is that how it is, hmm?’

‘Done told you that’s how it is,’ Daryl murmurs back, pressing their foreheads together.

It still feels odd to take the initiative, to curl a hand around a hip, pulling the other man’s body closer to his. Not _wrong_ , just different, surreal in a way, nothing like he expected this to be. He hasn’t given it a name yet, but he supposes Benji has. Something complicated, words Daryl never even heard of, or maybe something dead simple. Something Daryl never thought he’d find in another, let alone another guy.

But right now, he doesn’t need words.

He dips his head, presses his lips against Benji’s. The other man grins into the kiss. The hand with the gun moves up to his hair, metal scraping against the nape of his neck, making him shiver and pull the other even closer. Teeth nip at his lower lip and he opens up readily, allowing Daryl to curl his tongue around his.

When they break for air, Benji lets their foreheads rest against each other, allowing their breath to mingle between them, ‘we should signal the others, get them off the road,’ he whispers, hand tightening on the gun and the back of Daryl’s head.

‘Yeah,’ the hunter agrees reluctantly.

Together they walk down the stairs, their shoulders bumping together.

‘There’s a barn, on the left,’ Benji says as he holsters his gun. ‘It might have some supplies. We could build a fence to make this place more secure. Didn’t Maggie used to live on a farm? She might know how to start growing our own vegetables. It could be like a proper farm, you know?’

‘Hmm.’

‘I suppose Rick knows some stuff too, right? You said he and Carl had something like that at the prison. It could be like that again.’

‘Maybe.’

Benji grins at him, ‘I got a good feeling about this, Daryl.’

‘You always do.’

‘’s why you keep me around.’

The truth of that drags the corners of Daryl’s mouth upwards. They step outside and Daryl watches how Benji waves at the general vicinity of the hilltop, signalling Sasha and Rosita the all clear. The younger man leans against the banister, overlooking the fields which stretch out before them. He rolls up the sleeves of his black shirt and pops the first couple of buttons to reveal pale skin and dangling dog-tags. Dirty jeans rest low on his hips, tucked into army boots which scuff the floorboards while he gazes out over their new grounds.

‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s going to be a good summer.’

‘Better than the last,’ Daryl says as he steps closer to his friend, pressing up against his back. His chin on Benji’s shoulder, an arm around his waist. ‘Remember picking up some bratty asshole who wouldn’t shut up to save his life.’

Benji snorts, ‘do you now? Well, _I_ remember dashing to your rescue in a rather heroic fashion.’

‘Dream on.’

‘Does that mean this is our anniversary? One year. The big 365 days.’

Daryl laughs softly at that, hugging Benji closer, ‘yeah. The big 365.’

Of course they don’t remember the date on which they met, or even know today’s date, but it was a beautiful spring day, just like this one.

The sound of approaching cars drives them apart. For a long time now, Benji has accepted that Daryl is uncomfortable with showing affection in public. They never hold hands, or kiss or hug when around the group, but they always sit next to each other by the campfire and sleep within sight of each other. It doesn’t bother him when Daryl shrugs him off, not anymore, even though he sometimes wishes to be more open or physical. But he knows Daryl makes compromises too.

‘Hey,’ he says, catching Daryl’s attention just when the hunter lobes down the small set of stairs. ‘ _Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time_. Jorge Luis Borges.’

‘You’re always stealing another’s words,’ Daryl scoffs but there’s laughter in his voice.

Benji cocks his head to the side, ‘fine. How’s this then; I’d miss you more than I miss Nutella.’

‘’s pathetic.’

'You’ve beaten Nutella in 365 days, I think that’s moving up the ladder _fast_ , man. Maybe we should take a break, you know? Cool our heels a bit. I don’t want to rush things between us.’

Daryl looks back with a scowl on his face, but it softens when Benji laughs at him, ‘idiot,’ he growls.

‘Jesus, your face though. Do you think you’re ever going to accept that I’m never going away again?’

‘Can’t promise that.’

‘Universal fact, means I don’t have to promise.’

None of them might know how the outbreak began, but Daryl remembers how _this_ began. How he found a library that had harboured a green-eyed young man who was still optimistic enough about the new world to offer them food and water. A man who steals other people’s words as easily as he uses his own. Who has charmed his way into the hearts of the whole group through wit, happiness and strength.

What he doesn’t quite remember is how Benji has evolved from stranger, to friend, to _this_ , whatever they are now.

But he can trace the origins.

And this is how it began:


End file.
